If you aren't sure if you are "working enough", you might be working inefficiently.

Consider a job working in an office or working a retail job.
In such a job, you are paid to be at a place for a time. Ostensibly, you are paid "to do work" defined by your title, but that isn't really how it works. If you finish a full week's worth of work in two days, you don't get to take the rest of the week off. You don't get to say to your boss, "I finished that project so I'm done for the week". Instead, you are expected to work a set number of hours, typically at a specific location.

Functionally, you are paid to be there.
If your work is inefficient, you may accomplish less while you are working, but you still leave work at the end of the day.
If your work is more efficient, you may accomplish more during your day, but you still have to be there: you don't get to leave early because you worked efficiently on your shift.

Graduate school is different.
Most of your work doesn't need to be at a certain place or during a certain time. You likely have a lot of leeway with what you work on and when you work on it. A small number of tasks require you to be at a place for a time, but the rest can be done as you see fit.

In grad school, if your work is inefficient, you could work endlessly.
In grad school, if your work is efficient, you can actually work less and accomplish more (or work the same amount and accomplish much more).

In my experience, there are three types of work:

  1. TA work
  2. course and administrative work
  3. work that supports my career

There is a finite amount of TA work.
There is a finite amount of course and admin work.
There is an infinite amount of (potential) work that supports my career.

1 - TA Work

Some TA work is be at a place for a time work.
Specifically: proctoring/invigilating exams and office hours. If you do tutorials, this would also constitute be at a place for a time work.

Otherwise, TA work is piecemeal.
For example, imagine your task is to grade 300 papers. The course instructor doesn't care where you are, when you grade them, or how many hours it takes. If you finish them in two long days or if you finish them in five short days, that is up to you. Within reason, of course; there are general deadlines.

Even office hours can sometimes be managed remotely and asynchronously, i.e. by email.

2 - Course and Administrative work

Some course and admin work is be at a place for a time.
Specifically: course attendance and meetings.
When you are taking courses, you need to be at the class during its time.
When you have a meeting, you need to be in the meeting for its duration.

Otherwise, course and administrative work is piecemeal.
Your professor doesn't care when you write an assignment and doesn't care if you spend 1 hour or 10 hours on it. The department doesn't care if it takes 5 minutes or 60 minutes to fill out paperwork and they don't care if I email it to them at 2am or 10am. As above, there are deadlines, but the details of how you meet the deadlines are up to you.

3 - Work that supports my career

Work that supports my career is generally piecemeal.
Nobody cares when you write a grant application or when you write a paper. Write it at 5am when the world is asleep or write it on the weekend when others are taking time off. Spend 20 hours getting it done or spend 50 hours "perfecting" it (only to have reviewers tear it apart anyway). Or work on it from 9am–5pm, taking off evenings and weekends. The choice is yours.

Tip

Nobody is counting. You are not paid by the hour.
You will get your stipend whether you write 5 papers or 0 papers.
When it comes to your career, your true remuneration is very vague: you are paid in future-promise and delayed gratification.

Admittedly, some work that supports your career can have specific constraints similar to be at a place for a time work, e.g. if you have to be in a wet-lab at certain times, your have to collect data during certain hours of the day, or you have to visit specific neighbourhoods or offices to collect your data. How much work is constrained in this manner depends on the details of the research you do and on how much "hands on" data-collection you do as a graduate student (as opposed to bringing in undergraduate RAs).

Here are two examples of different ways of approaching work that supports your career.

A friend and colleague of mine reasoned that his meager grad student stipend equated to a regular job working ~20 h/week. As such, he decided to put in ~20 h/week and spent the rest of his time relaxing, playing piano and guitar, and generally enjoying a bohemian lifestyle. While his supervisor wasn't blissful about his choice, firing him or kicking him out of the program was never considered. My friend felt some stress about his supervisor's disapproval, but he mostly enjoyed his free time. He already know that he didn't want to become an academic, which was wise because his CV wouldn't be competitive in academia.

I love my work and I didn't mind putting in plenty of time.
I care about working efficiently and was interested in an academic career so I focused on grants and publications. Thanks to this focus, I have numerous publications for someone at my level and have received a lot of funding from grants to which I applied. This includes a lot of first-author publications where I was the champion leading the project. My CV is probably in the top 10% for publications during a PhD and I've pulled in over half a million dollars in research funding. I think it is fair to say that my academic CV is pretty competitive.

Lots of people in my cohort found more "in-between" balances.
There isn't one best way to do your work.

Do not treat grad school like a be at a place for a time job.

If you are treating grad school like a be at a place for a time job and are spending 8 hours at a place for a time, that is likely terribly inefficient. If 8 hours nets you 4 hours of decent work, your work-to-time ration is 2:1: you would be wasting 50% of your time!

You are not in an office job.
You are not "on the company dime".
You are not wasting someone else's time and getting paid for it.
You are wasting your time.
That seems foolish since you are the only one losing.

My advice is:
When you work, work.
When you don't want to work, fully disengage from work and go live your life.
Nobody is watching. Complete mandatory tasks, then do as much or as little as you want.
But ask yourself: What do you want to do for your career?

If your planned career is academia, this is it.
You are here. You are not waiting to live. You are living.
If you cannot find enjoyment in it now, what needs to change?

If academia is not your planned career, what is your planned career?
Optimize for your planned career. Figure out what makes you competitive and do that.

Whatever you do, figure it out. Become efficient.
Don't waste 50% of your life for 5+ years only to wonder what went wrong.

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